"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold" -W. B. Yeats

Monthly Archives: September 2013

“What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to piss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn’t you consider that to be insane?”

It’s ten past midnight and I am supposed to go to soccer practice around 8am. But I went to our high school football game tonight and felt excluded, sad, and worried about my little sister. I came home and was overwhelmed by a wave of unanticipated depression. My boyfriend stopped texting, right when I needed someone to talk to, and I couldn’t muster the will to speak to anyone else, even my psychologist who told me I should text her if I start to think about suicide.

Which I did.

While driving my boyfriend and little sister home from the football game, I thought about how I could kill myself by crashing my car. Of course, I knew I would never-and could never-crash while they were in the car. And I’m too afraid to wonder if I would have done it if no one had been there to silently and unknowingly change my mind.

So I spent time on Facebook, then triggered myself more by scrolling through everything on Tumblr with the tag “depression”. Please never do this to yourself. Then I of course listened to Demons by Imagine Dragons, which describes a lot of what I’ve been feeling. And I cried a lot. And felt worthless. And felt alone. I desperately don’t want to die, but sometimes I feel like I don’t have the strength to continue living. I just want everything to stop, or at least stop hurting.

Then I googled something about suicide and found this comment on a forum under the question “what is the best way to kill myself?”:

There is no reason people should be forced to live when their lives are miserable and they want an exit.Why would a stranger have to be so selfish to deny someone the right to leave this place?

And this killed me, because it just doesn’t seem right. Isn’t this like giving up? Like if a doctor were to say, “oh, you have cancer, there’s no reason we should try to help you”.

I just needed to release some of these thoughts, and I would very much like other people to comment on the italicized text above. Because I really don’t know what to think about it. To me at least, it feels terribly wrong.

This past week has been really sucky for me mood-wise. Whereas I usually have only a day or two of feeling depressed and unmotivated, this entire past week-from the evening of Friday the 13th to I guess now still-has been consistently morose.

I credit a part of this to the fact that I have yet another injury plaguing my attempts to become a better soccer player and obtain some playing time in the Varsity games. So far I’ve only have five minutes in one game, and in another the team was very below our level so we took an early lead and all the subs got to go in for the majority of the game.

But my back has been bothering me. The pain is on the lower right side, sort of also at the top of my butt muscle. It started hurting at Friday’s practice, and has been bothering me ever since. I played during practice Saturday, Monday, a warm up for a game I did not play in on Tuesday and the game I played a lot in on Wednesday. I technically can run and kick, but I physically cannot sprint at 100%, which upsets me because, especially in games, I don’t want to let my team down.

I also started getting upset because I thought my coach wouldn’t recognize my injury and conclude I was simply not working hard enough and being lazy, which is the opposite of what I want to do. That’s one of my only real strengths on the soccer field-working hard, and recovering. And I’ve been working on communication because I’m very quiet.

So during Thursday’s practice I told coach my back hurt, and because I had never experienced this type of pain before, she wanted me to see our athletic trainer. One question she asked surprised me; she inquired if I had been under more stress than usual lately, and I began to wonder if it had anything to do with my undiagnosed depression.

He told me to ice and rest and see how the next day-a game went. However, I knew I wouldn’t be able to play to my potential and so I told the coach during the warm up that my back hurt, and so I sat out that game. When I saw the athletic trainer again he condemned me to sit out Friday’s and Saturday’s practice, which meant I couldn’t go on the infamous Varsity 5 mile run, which I was legitimately sad about. It’s like a only-Varsity thing that I have never been a part of, and that I was looking forward to being able to recall and say “yes, I did that”.

So while sitting in practice, I get this terrible feeling of guilt. Why does this always happen to me? Why am I the one sitting out all the time? Why doesn’t my body work the way everyone else’s does? Why can’t I handle playing soccer? Am I being a baby?

I understand that it shouldn’t be my fault, but sometimes it could be. Sometimes injuries come from not stretching or not being physically fit enough. Whenever people ask me about my back now, I’m ashamed and bashful. Like, “Please don’t look at me, I’m sorry I’m hurt”.

***Note: Any dialogue is from memory and therefore is probably not exact wording. Also, order of events might be wrong, but all of this did happen sooo yeah***

If this is your first time reading a post of mine or you just don’t follow me avidly, I wrote my mother a note telling her that I essentially think I might be some kind of depressed. In response, she decided to set up a doctor’s appointment for me with my regular family doctor. It was rescheduled because of soccer to this morning.

So today when my mom picked me up and we went to the doctors, I was so nervous I wanted to just completely skip it. However, I didn’t voice my nerves (though it would have helped, at least then I might have known how much my mom had already told the doctor) and sat patiently dreading the inevitable while watching Rachael Ray in the waiting room.

We got in the examining room and waited for a bit, then she came in, all cheery and such. My doctor has a slight accent (Polish, I believe), and is really nice, as far as I know. She sat down and asked me how it was going, and me being me, I was so close to crying already that I just shrugged awkwardly.

She scanned over some notes in my file and said, “Well, you think you’re depressed, right?”. Pause. Silence. “Can you tell me how you feel?”.

So, in a shaky, about-to-cry voice, I told her that, though it wasn’t every day, I felt unmotivated to do things. In no particular order, she asked me how long this has been happening, and I told her since about April. She asked me some questions, like if I felt like crying sometimes, and I shook my head quite forcefully at that one.

She also asked if something had triggered it, or if it just came on its own. I’m sorry to say that I lied, because something (might) have triggered it, but I couldn’t bring it up. So I just said no. She asked me a few more questions, about if I had been bullied, sexually harassed, or having trouble with my knee, soccer, school, etc, all of which I replied with a firm negative.

Then she inquired, “Do you want to hurt yourself?”

Now, this was a very moving, chilling, and personal way of putting that question. Not “have you self-harmed, had suicidal thoughts, made plans for suicide, etc” like how any of the other clinical questionnaires would probably put it. It wasn’t clinical feeling at all.

And I couldn’t answer because I knew the answer.

So I shrugged again, and by now I had started gently crying. She told me that I shouldn’t be ashamed of my symptoms and that I needed to tell her so that I could get treated, because this was like any other disease that she needed to know about. I simply shrugged again.

Then she said (more so talking to my mother now, who sat with me the entire time) that she would refer me to both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. My mom had to ask the difference: from what I gathered, the psychologist is someone I would talk to for a decent span of time each week about my emotions and such, while the psychiatrist specializes in dealing with mental health and wellness, though I would see them for a shorter amount of time/longer span between appointments.

My doctor also suggested that I start medication.

And I was like WOAH THERE. What? You’re just gonna throw me on some meds?

My mother was also hesitant. She got that “eh” look on her face and asked if that was necessary and what they would do exactly. My doctor responded that, because I had been feeling this way since April, which is five months, that I might need the medication to make me feel better.

Then my mom started asking about side effects, because of those commercials we all know where the list of side effects for some type of drug takes up about half the ad. My doctor said we can start with just the psychologist/psychiatrist and see if they suggest medication. She also mentioned that the biggest thing they have to monitor in teenagers is if the medication makes the disorder worse, which is what I am so deathly afraid of.

Because both my mother and I were showing concern of how quickly this seemed to escalate, she had to ask me again to assure her that I’ve been feeling consistently bad, and she asked for the percentage of days when I feel good and when I feel bad. I answered that for a few days I’ll feel fine, but then I’ll feel bad for a few days, so it’s about a 50-50 ratio. This seemed to be enough for her.

My mom then asked if the psychologist and psychiatrist would be covered under our insurance (and I internally laughed). Also, when she first mentioned psychologist, I flash-backed to “The Room” when Johnny goes “But you’re a psychologist” and I started giggling on the inside.

Finally, she did some normal doctor-ey stuff and then she decided we would do some blood work to check if I have any chemical imbalances and such. I made my mommy hold my hand while she took blood.

We left the office with a referral to the aforementioned psychologist/psychiatrist. My doctor said that she has referred patients (especially younger ones) to this particular psychologist before and that she was excellent, which I’m sure any doctor would say but it made me feel better all the same. I’m also scheduled to go back to see my regular doctor in about a month so she can check on my progress.

On the way back to the car, my mom talked about how different people she knew went to see psychologists during their tough times, and that I shouldn’t worry about this.

I was slightly worried, but the real issue in my mind was “wait…that’s how it goes? No diagnostic tests to try to figure out if its chronic or major depression or bipolar disorder or something else? What if I’m wrong and making a big fuss over nothing?”.

I mean, please leave some comments if you can about this type of stuff. How are you diagnosed with depression? Is it all based on what you feel, or do you need solid evidence, such as chemical imbalances, or somewhere in between?

Then I started thinking about what I would tell my friends. I simply told them today that I had blood work done, and only my boyfriend questioned why, and I didn’t give him an answer. I don’t know how much they know, and I’m wondering if there will be a good time to tell them or if I should just bring it up when I get the chance.

Thank you for reading this extra long post, I just wanted to talk about this, even though I guess it’s pretty personal. Again, comments would be greatly appreciated.

Because our soccer game got pushed into overtime the night I was supposed to talk to my doctor, my mom rescheduled it for this morning, and I’m super nervous.

I mean, I don’t know if my mom already told the doctor what was going on or if she’s going to make me tell her when we get there. How do I explain best how I feel? What is she gonna make me do?

I’m assuming some blood tests will be done/scheduled, but I don’t know what else to expect. This past week I’ve been okay, except on Tuesday after a soccer game where I didn’t get ANY playing time, so there was sort of a reason I wanted to mope around and do nothing.

Then last night I felt really bad because we lost a soccer game we didn’t deserve to lose. I only got about 5 minutes of playing time, but then at the end of game speech the coach scolded all of the subs for not being fit enough or willing enough to work hard, essentially saying she couldn’t trust us to play to our full potential and that, because she was struggling to get players off the bench, the girls on the field were tired and that was a major reason we lost.

At the time I wasn’t feeling too bad, but last night I had a terrible soccer dream. I didn’t get to bed until midnight last night because of my homework and studying and the soccer game AGAIN went into overtime.

So today was my very last first day of high school. Essentially, my first day of senior year.

Driving to school was pretty cool, though when I walked out into the parking lot after school there were so many cars and people that it was a little overwhelming. It’s fun blasting music with my sister in the morning though.

All my classes are amazing, with the exception of gym, which is average at the worst.

My best friend is in my lunch, study hall, and three of my four classes. My other best friend has one class and then lunch with me. Me and my boyfriend don’t have any classes together, though we do have lunch and study hall together. He’s probably going to be lab teching, which i was also considering doing. Essentially as a lab tech you do menial labor for the science teachers, but I figured it would look good on a college app since I’m planning on going into biology.

My teachers are all fantastic. My Anatomy and Physiology teacher is hilarious, and my gym teacher is the nicer of the senior gym teachers. My AP English teacher was my English teacher last year, and though she demands a lot of us, she is phenomenal. AP English, the class I’ve been looking forward to since freshman year, is made better with her presence. My AP Chem teacher is really chill.

I felt like I was actually close to people too. I’ve had issues with loneliness, but I felt pretty much at home strolling through the crowded hallways. I visited and had conversations with old teachers and friends I hadn’t seen over the summer, and it was really nice.

So I’m very optimistic for this year. There’s a lot to do, but I’m going to work my hardest and make the most of the single year I have left in high school. It’s starting to sink in that I’m a senior (finally).

Alright, I better go start that 2 hour homework assignment our AP English teacher already gave us…we are supposed to expect this every night, which is really going to suck while I still have soccer. I really wanted to do this blog post though.

Good luck to everyone else starting school, and especially to my fellow seniors and freshman like my little sister.